Come on then, give it to me.
Scream your joy of dinosaurs
and stamp collecting into my wrinkled face.
Describe your favourite film to me,
shot by shot. Shout, if you have to.
Explain why the book you just read
bent the moon in half.
List every animal in order of speed.
Trip over your tongue.
Love someone who loves you
the way you love your hobbies.
Tell me every single thing I’ve done wrong.
Let your actions be a reflection in a puddle
convincing me to jump in.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

I imagine you
eating raspberry jam with your fingers,
transcribing whole scenes
from old episodes of Coronation Street,
collecting Pogs and Slammers.
We all have them,
little quirks no one knows about.
Do you have a favourite bench to cry on?
Are you a landscape jigsaw kind of guy,
or do you prefer puzzles with people?
You have the jaw of someone
who bites straight through a humbug.
I try not to read too many interviews with you.
The idea of you feeling out of place at work drinks
or not being a very good goalkeeper,
or stashing away Shirley Bassey vinyls
are things I want to hold on to.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

I can’t remember
the last time you blinked
and I think you’re a lizard
and I look at my arms
and the skin is covered
in crispy scales
desperate to fall off
and my tongue is dry
and I forget what we eat
and where we live
and how often we breathe
and why you’re here
and then you blink
and we’re both eggs
waiting to go again.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

It’s Christmas Day and everyone has finished
eating firsts and seconds and,
in an unnamed person’s case, fourths.
There’s something about the dinner table
spending a day in the living room
that adds a level of chaos to conversations.
A man with glasses who shares my blood says
Elvis Presley served him fish and chips last week.
A teenager who is 100 years old and shares
a wall with me trusts and believes him.
She’s laughed at for 25 years
until I look at my son with eyes
I hope will be brave enough to trust and believe.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

And she put the tangerines in her basket
to the righthand side of the dozen eggs
but on top of the dark cooking chocolate
then made her way to the magazine aisle
to flick through stories with headlines like
MY DOG HAS THE SOUL OF MY DAD’S EX
and she chose a birthday card for her sister
with a pun about gin then put it back
and chose one with a sketch of cat
then put it back and thought she’d get the card
from a different shop then went back
to the fruit and veg section to get some tangerines
but remembered she’d already got tangerines
so went to the self-service checkout to pay
then went home and retold her afternoon with vigour.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

The thick coughs of milk are my shoulders,
the skin under my eyes is the back of an open mouth,
the sagging bars of a clothes airer are my ribs,
the lines on a digital clock are my eyelashes,
there’s a constant feeling of forgetting
and that is the same t-shirt for three days,
my toes are legless sheep,
the bedside lamp is at the end of a tunnel,
my freckles are dust on the bathroom floor,
the welcome mat is a filthy pillow,
the alphabetised books on my shelves are all Zs.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

He has the fingers of a man
who picks his nose when he’s alone,
the eyelashes of a man
who flicked Dijon mustard into his eyeball,
the pert bum of a man
who pooed himself at his work desk,
the hairline of a man
who sweats the small stuff,
the toes of a man
who walks in circles,
the shinbones of a man
who dangles his feet over ledges,
the core of a woman
who goes and goes and goes.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

The number of ingrowing hairs
in my beard
gives me confidence
there’s something in my skull
worth digging for.

© Carl Burkitt 2020